14 Wall Street experts told us the single metric they're each watching to assess coronavirus market fallout - and give their portfolios a leg up

Ruobing Su/Business Insider

From a key commodity index to new virus cases, leading strategists and analysts described for Business Insider what they're tracking closest.

• Business Insider asked 14 investment strategists and analysts to share one crucial metric, index, or signal they're closely tracking as the novel coronavirus throws markets and economies into disarray.
• Their answers illustrate where experts are looking to gauge when the worst may be over for investors.
• "What matters for the market right now is the cresting of virus cases - not PMI data, not earnings revisions, and certainly not GDP estimates," one chief investment strategist said.
• Visit BI Prime for more investing stories.

The novel coronavirus, with the devastation it's inflicted on economies around the world, has created a chaotic environment for investors that's virtually unparalleled.

In the US, the longest bull market in history ended, only to re-enter one within weeks. Amid those price swings, a widely used measure of expected market volatility shot up to its highest level on record.

The Federal Reserve attempted to stabilize the market with two emergency interest rate cuts in March. That lowered borrowing costs and was designed to stimulate economic activity at a time when officials mandated quarantines, businesses shuttered, and experts forecasted a skyrocketing unemployment rate.

Now, as markets whip around into early April and the investment community expects further deterioration of economic growth, investors are on edge amid a highly uncertain environment. After all, there is no real COVID-19 playbook to consult.

For a window into how strategists are judging the unprecedented macroeconomic environment, Business Insider asked 14 investment strategists and analysts to share one crucial metric, index, or signal they're closely tracking as they assess the ultimate damage the coronavirus will inflict.

For the sake of drawing from a wide range of economic and market gauges, we asked experts to provide a response other than the widely cited US jobless claims, which hit 6.6 million last week, bringing its two-week total to almost 10 million.

Their answers illustrate how they're gauging when the worst may be over for investors. Several told us the number of new coronavirus cases is the most important figure to watch - even more so than any core measure of the US economy.

"The current environment has us paying less attention to economic data and laser-focused on the virus data," Ed Campbell, a portfolio manager and managing director at QMA, told Business Insider.

Their responses come just ahead of corporate earnings season, which will give investors early evidence of how the virus has negatively impacted a wide range of public companies. First-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are expected to decline 7.3%, the largest year-over-year drop since falling 15.7% in the third quarter of 2009, according to FactSet.

Here are the singular measures more 14 experts told us they're watching now: